by Nick Pirog
I dropped the tire iron and began climbing the tree. It was harder than I expected. On account of the fatness.
After a long couple of minutes, I crawled out onto one of the branches. My face was beaded in sweat and I was wheezing. The branch was softball-size in diameter, which would have held Fit Thomas just fine but creaked under the weight of Fat Thomas.
“Please hold,” I wheezed.
I’d survived too much in my life to die climbing a fucking tree.
I set my feet and prepared to leap to the roof.
Crack.
The limb snapped clean off.
I braced for impact and landed on my side with a loud thud.
“Oh, God.”
I lay groaning for a long minute, then did a damage assessment. I fell on my left side with my shoulder, ribs, and thigh absorbing most of the impact. I doubted anything was broken, but I wouldn’t be starting Pilates the next morning like I intended.
I pushed myself up with a grunt, holding my tender ribs with my arm.
Farmhouse: 3. Thomas: 0.
I picked up the tire iron and shouted, “You dirty rat! You killed my brother!”
Did I mention I was delirious?
And now concussed.
I smashed the tire iron against the front door. Once, twice, three million times. The door died a horrible death. I pushed open what remained of the door, a light breeze sending ten years of dust into the air.
I sneezed.
The sneeze sent a bolt of lightning through my bruised ribs, and I fled back to the porch.
The dust would need a few minutes to settle, and after the pain in my side lessened to mildly excruciating, I decided to do some exploring. First stop, the chicken coop. The roof was slightly angled, and there was a thin door. The door was ajar, and I stuck my head in. Inside were thirty little cubbies. No chickens.
I walked around to the back and saw the small opening where the chickens could go in and out. Hypothetically, of course. Like I said, there were no chickens. The ramp leading to the opening was gone, most likely scavenged by someone many years earlier.
I continued plowing through the waist-high grass until I came to a barn with a steeply sloped roof. The entrance to the barn was two large sliding panels, but they were held together by a thick lock and chain. I put my ear to the crack between the two panels and listened. I could hear a bit of rustling, but that was probably my subconscious wanting a family of barn owls to be living there.
I was headed back toward the farmhouse when a rectangle of fencing hidden in the tall grass caught my eye. It took me a long minute to reach the crumbling enclosure: a 1000-square-foot area of dirt with the occasional outcropping of weeds.
It was a pigpen.
Harold had told several stories about the pigs on the farm, about how smart they were, and how they each had a different personality. He said it always broke his heart when they had to slaughter one.
They were just pigs, I remembered thinking. Delicious pigs.
A few minutes later, I returned to the farmhouse. The dust had settled and I stepped inside. Mark the Lawyer had said that Harold rented the land out from the mid-eighties up until the early 2000s so I half expected the inside of the house to be nicer than the outside.
And it was.
Marginally.
The interior walls were covered in wallpaper—beige with maroon flowers. At the corners, the wallpaper was peeling away, and a few sections had fallen and were lying prostrate on the brown tiled floor.
From the entry, there was a dining room to the right and a living area to the left. The dining room was filled with a scarred wooden table and three chairs. A chandelier hung above the table at a thirty-degree angle. The many light bulbs were colored nearly black by time. Cobwebs clung to the chandelier, stretching to the brass rods and thick beige curtains that held the sunlight at bay.
I slowly peeled the curtains back—sending years of dust sprinkling into the air—then unlocked the window and pushed it upward with a loud creak. I did the same with a second window, then made my way to the living area.
The living area was occupied by a gray upholstered couch, a wooden rocking chair, and a tan La-Z-Boy, which easily could have been the first one off the assembly line. A rectangular rug, striped brown and white, centered the room. An oval coffee table sat atop the rug. Everything faced an oak entertainment center where a monstrosity of a TV stood.
I sat down in the rocking chair and rocked a couple times, the chair’s stiff joints groaning under my weight. I pushed myself up and out of the chair and drew a smiley face in the layer of dust caking the sixty-inch, half-ton Zenith.
There was a light switch against the wall, and I flipped it up. The lights didn’t turn on, which didn’t mean a whole lot since few light bulbs lived to see their teenage years. Still, I made a mental note to find out the names of the utility companies.
Next, I made my way to the kitchen. There was a large steel oven with huge handles which made me think about the oven Hansel and Gretel shoved the mean old witch into. Above the oven hung a series of cast iron pots and pans. I gave a skillet a light push, sending it rocking back and forth.
Next to the stove was a small sink, and I turned the faucet. Nothing came out. No water. No air. No noise.
Lastly, I checked the fridge. It was light blue and looked fit to survive a nuclear holocaust. I pulled the door open. It was empty.
On the counter next to the fridge was the solitary anachronism. An espresso machine. It must have been left over by whoever last rented the place or was brought over later by some extravagant squatters.
I chuckled lightly then headed for the staircase opposite the kitchen. The wooden stairs creaked loudly, and I was reminded of that one time when I climbed out onto a tree branch and it started to creak. And then I fell twelve feet.
I involuntarily shuddered.
Delirious.
Concussed.
And now I had PTSD.
Awesome.
Keeping with the color scheme, the top floor was maroon carpet. A narrow hallway connected three bedrooms: one master, then two identical smaller ones.
I checked the master bedroom first. There was a queen-size bed with a floral bedspread, but other than that, the room was void of any character, its trinkets and possessions long boxed up or given away.
Next, I checked the two smaller bedrooms. Both had a single bed, stripped to the mattress and two naked pillows. The sun shone through the lone window of the bedroom facing west, a box of gold on the maroon carpet. I sat down on the mattress—sending a plume of dust jettisoning into the air—and knew the room once belonged to Harold. It sounds odd, but I could feel him in the room, could sense his spirit. Almost as if the millions of dust molecules dancing in the sunlight were his ashes.
“Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye,” I said softly.
I waited for Harold to answer. For a quick gust of wind. For the rattling of the window. For the ashes to spell out “Goodbye, Thomas” on the floor.
But Harold had better things to do.
Two minutes later, I was asleep.
Chapter Four
The diner was called Dina’s Corner Dine-In.
It was half full at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday, and I guessed it was slammed come the weekends. The patrons were mostly men, a healthy mix of white collar and blue collar. Slacks sat next to blue jeans. Wingtips conversed with work boots.
I could feel the stares as I walked in and took a stool at the counter. Maybe it was because I was limping. Maybe it was because I was grimacing with each step. Maybe it was because I was the first new face they’d seen in weeks. Either way, the looks were brief, the conversations halted for a single breath before resuming.
The counter was black Formica, clean and polished. Half the stools were occupied, and I took the one on the far left. The man to my right had a thick mustache and was clad in a flannel shirt and a tan Carhartt jacket. Warm for what promised to be a day in the mid-eighties, both in temperature and h
umidity. The hand cinched around his coffee cup was worn and callused, a farmer’s hand.
I glanced at my hands. I had a blister on my thumb from playing Tetris, but otherwise, my hands screamed of a life of money and privilege.
A fiftyish woman politely but efficiently took my order for two Belgian waffles, a double order of bacon, an apple juice, and seven Percocet.
I’d slept from sundown to sunup and I felt rested, but my body was in shambles. There was a deep bruise on my left buttock that ran down the length of my thigh. My left shoulder was swollen and stiff, and I could barely lift my arm six inches. But both of these injuries paled in comparison to my ribs. Each time I exhaled it felt like someone was spreading my ribs with a crowbar.
There was a stack of Tarrin Weekly near the entrance and I’d grabbed one on my way in. I flipped through the small paper, reading about the many church revivals the coming weekend, a couple of teachers who were retiring after the school year ended the following week, the results of the Little Miss Tarrin pageant, and Mayor Paula Van Dixon’s reelection bid for her tenth straight term.
A different waitress appeared behind the counter and said, “I hear you’re looking for some Percocet.”
She was cute, early twenties. Her stomach was just starting to round out, and I guessed she was halfway into her pregnancy.
“Or a morphine drip,” I quipped.
She laughed, then handed me four blue capsules.
I squinted at the pills. “Um, I think these are Advil.”
“Best I could do.” She smiled. “But, I mean, at least they’re gelcaps.”
“Hallelujah,” I muttered, then added, “Don’t think I won’t Yelp about this.”
She snickered, then asked, “What’s the other guy look like?”
“Green and about thirty feet tall.”
Her eyebrows furrowed.
“I fell out of a tree,” I explained.
I told her the story.
A few minutes after she left to greet a table, my food came. I ate two bites of waffle, then two pieces of bacon, then washed the four Advil down with apple juice.
The cute waitress returned after checking on her tables and asked, “The Humphries Farm? Did you buy it?”
“It was handed down to me in a will.”
“Are you a Humphries?”
“Not technically. It’s a long story.”
Her gaze told me that someday she would like to hear all the details, and I started to have serious doubts that the father of little Billy-Bob-To-Be was still in the picture.
Who knows, maybe she was a chubby chaser.
“No one has been out there for a long time,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s in pretty bad shape.”
While I had her there, I asked her the names of the electric, gas, and water supply companies. She let me borrow one of her pens, and I wrote the names down on a napkin. Then I asked if they had a Yellow Pages.
“A Yellow Pages?” she asked in disbelief. “Why?”
“So I can find out the phone numbers of these places and call them.”
“Why don’t you use your phone?”
I pulled my phone out of my front pocket and showed her.
“A flip phone? I didn’t even know they still made those.”
A group of five men walked through the door, and the waitress told them she’d be right with them. She pulled an iPhone out of her apron and slid it over to me. “Here, you can borrow mine. Just, um, don’t scroll through the pictures.”
I finished off my breakfast, then spent the next ten minutes looking up the utility companies on the waitress’s phone and setting up accounts with each. I could expect both the electricity and gas to be turned on at some point later in the day. The water supply company said they would send someone within the hour.
I was still wearing the same thing as yesterday: jeans, a black T-shirt, and blue Asics, and I was in desperate need of a shower and shave.
Speaking of getting clean, I searched “Tarrin cleaning services” and got one hit. A company called Tarrin Cleaning Services.
Creative.
I called the number, but no one answered, and I left a message.
The waitress stopped by a minute later, and I gave back her phone. I told her all the nude pics I saw were extremely tasteful.
She enjoyed this.
I attempted to give her twenty bucks for her troubles, but she wouldn’t accept it.
Back outside, the traffic on Main Street had doubled. A number of kids with backpacks were walking on the sidewalks, headed to their respective schools. One kid had a cowboy hat on, but for the most part, the kids were dressed just like the city kids. Lots of skateboards. Big headphones. Bright colors.
I drove to the middle of town and parked in front of a home goods store called, quite fittingly, Kim’s Home Goods.
Why was it that every store had to be someone's?
Dina’s Corner Dine-In.
Joe’s Automotive.
Nancy’s Music and Jewelry.
Morris’s Loans.
Bob’s Accounting Services.
Maybe I should open a shop.
Thomas’s Buttons.
A bell rang as I entered the shop, and two women chatting near a register smiled. They were both in their late forties and looked similar enough to be siblings.
“Well, hi there,” they both shouted too enthusiastically.
I waved a quick hello.
“What brings you in here today?” asked the one striding toward me. She was clad in a beige sweater, blue jeans, and red designer glasses. Did these people not know how hot it was here?
“I just moved here and I need a bunch of stuff.”
“He just moved here and he needs a bunch of stuff,” she yelled to the other woman.
Turning back to me, she asked, “Where’d you move in?”
“The Old Humphries Farm.” I hadn’t anticipated adding the “Old,” but after seeing the place and sleeping a night there, it seemed necessary.
“He just moved into the Humphries place,” she echoed.
The other woman started clapping.
I pondered running to my car and driving back to Seattle.
As if sensing this, the woman grabbed my arm. “Now, what all do you need?”
I told her I needed a lot of the necessities, towels, bedsheets, and “all that jazz.”
Annie, that was her name, gave my arm a tug and said, “Well, all right then.”
An hour later, I walked out with two sets of bedsheets, three pillows, a quilt, four towels of different dimensions, a blender, a toaster, and an invitation to attend both women’s church revivals the coming weekend.
My next stop was the hardware store. The two men working were busy with other customers, and I got out of there quickly with a deluxe toolbox and some bolt cutters.
As I was putting the tools in my car, my phone rang. It was the cleaning service. I scheduled to meet two cleaners at the farmhouse in an hour. The woman on the phone didn’t ask for an address. The Humphries Farm seemed to suffice.
After the call, my phone rang a second time. It was the electric company confirming the power had been turned on, which meant I could buy some groceries.
I decided to walk to the grocery store rather than drive, hoping the short stroll would help loosen up the stiffness in my leg.
I remembered seeing the grocery store a block and a half past the traffic light and headed in that direction. After a block, I reached a small park, which I hadn’t noticed the previous day. The park was located on the corner of the busiest intersection on Main Street. It would have been a prime location for commerce, possibly even the most sought after lot in all of Tarrin. The park was as out of place as the espresso machine in the farmhouse kitchen.
There was a stone bench, a couple small trees, two rectangular flower beds, and a large rock. Leaning against the rock was a handful of yellow flowers.
The rock was twenty yards from the sidewalk. The sun reflected off its shin
y surface. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t the rock reflecting the sun, it was a bronze plaque.
I stepped onto the grass and approached the rock. It was four feet wide and came up to my waist. It was granite, a kaleidoscope of gray, white, and black. The face of the rock sloped down gently where the plaque was secured.
Inscribed on the plaque was:
In Loving Memory:
* * *
Peggy Bertina
Will Dennel
Neil Felding
Tom Lanningham
Odell McBride
* * *
October 9, 2012
* * *
You will never be forgotten
I leaned down and looked more closely at the flowers propped against the rock.
Tulips.
Five of them.
The park was a memorial.
My brain started whirring. The first theory that popped into my head was that the park seemed so out of place because there had previously been a commercial business there. Then something happened.
A fire.
There must have been a fire and five people died.
I gave the memorial a departing nod, then found my way back to the sidewalk. A half block later, I came to the town grocery store, Harvest Food & Market. Though it was half the size of the Whole Foods where I shopped in Seattle, it had a decent selection. I pondered buying health food, but I was in no shape to exercise, and I decided to postpone Operation Fitness at least a few more days.
The checkout clerk was an acne-faced kid with dark hair.
“You guys don’t have any chocolate chip waffles,” I informed him.
“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows jumping. “I don’t think we have those.”
“Yeah, you don’t. Who do I talk to about ordering them?”
“Travis, but he’s not here right now.”
“Well, if you can get Travis to start carrying chocolate chip waffles, I’ll give you fifty bucks.”
He smiled and said he’d see what he could do.
While he was bagging my groceries, I asked, “What’s the deal with the memorial down the street? Did a business burn down?”
